The Wire Magazine 1992-12

k*

IC IN OUR TIM

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THE TIME presents

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J" TONIGHT

ABERDEEN Music Hall:

(12)

ALDEBURGH Snape

Concert Hall (0728 453 543):
Julian Joseph/Orphy Robinson

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Hall(021 236 3889): Bill
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Mengelberg and Han Bennink
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61? WIRE

IN NEXT MONTH'S NEW-LOOK WIRE

We take a look at the visionaries and rogue elements who march to the beat of a different drum:
GIL SCOTT-HERON, PETER BROTZMANN, SONIC YOUTH, BILL FRISELL and many more.

On sale 26 January 1993

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FORTHCOMING

RELEASES

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^^S^ro eP r„ y Wheeler, K5

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DAVID LANG: Composer

? SWIRE

New York Now

Despatches from Howard Mandel, our man in the TriState Area.

Lower Manhattan, the Twin Towers BECKY SINKER

We joined the party when Clinton came to town. Not the
Democratic party, and not Bill Clinton, though he was our presiden¬
tial candidate 'cause he’s closer to our g-g-generation on the lust,
draft and drug issues, plus he blows tenor sax.

nonsense since Jimmy Carter, the last Dem pres, had Dizzy, Mingus,
Ornette and Cecil Taylor at the White House for a 4th of July jam
session. Nominated by popular/critical vote and general acclamation,
Clinton succeeded the hardest working man in show business -
JAMES BROWN!!!! - and he's remained in office even through
Prince’s long campaign.

Yorkers take life less seriously. A wise fool in multi-coloured dread

Most of his cabinet convened for this high level council: Gary Shyder

with King Sunny Ad£. The three-man horn section riffed like Count
Basie’s band shifting from Jo Jones’ super swing to Dennis Chambers’

rhymes a la Slim Gaillard, featured a blustery young trombone soloist
By so doing, Clinton is posed as the liberal polar opposite of

72 sWIRE

Z3SWIRE

Abbey Lincoln

ABBEY

NATIONALISM

The indomitable singer Abbey Lincoln talks sex
and politics with David Toop.

Gino Sprio zooms in.

political. I just went looking for myself. In a world where you
can’t be yourself you may as well slit your throat.”

Having solved that particular problem many years ago,
Abbey Lincoln now looks ready to slit somebody else’s throat.
Eating chicken in a West End hotel at 1 lam, resplendent in a
spectacular hat and fresh off the Paris-London flight, her
legendary intensity is undiminished. Always true to her own
path and frequently engaged in community celebrations and
explorations of her roots (in all senses of that errant word) she
has been stigmatised over the years as "difficult". A “profes¬
sional negro”, critic Ira Gitler called her in Down Beat,
deciding with that malicious, repressively ignorant paternal¬
ism so typical of the professional jazz critic that “we don’t need
the Elijah Muhammad type of thinking in jazz." 30 years after
the event, I remind Abbey of Gitler’s slur. She shrugs: “It was
at the height of the movement. Who knows? Some people are

What she does is speak her mind. Sometimes the mind
roams in weird regions of judgement day Afrocentric fun¬
damentalism, but unless you feel threatened, you can only like
her for it. Like so many of the performers who flourished in the
long-gone finesse and clarity of post-bop jazz, she sees herself
as a warrior in a cultural armageddon, the (devil) enemy
manifested through a bewildering variety of demonic forms:

cosmetic surgery, foul language; furies from the box of
Pandora, energised and distributed by electronic media,
blasting away the supple interaction of acoustic instruments,

Chiefly remembered in the reference books for her vocal
contributions to Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom Now Suite,

Hawkins, Booker Little and Mai Waldron, she sees jazz as a
beleaguered force in a hostile world. “The music is like an

black merchants don’t care for it at all. They like rap and rock.
They will spend their money for that, but this [jazz], which is
like the cap on the pyramid, they ignore.”

The title of her new album - Devil’s Got Your Tongue -
shows how seriously she regards the battle for art, morals,
salvation. “ Living for the moment, sowing devil seeds . . . Tell a

title song. “ You got holy magic, but the devil’s got your tongue .”

This album, which includes collaborations with The Staple
Singers, Babatundi Olatunji, J.J. Johnson, Stanley Turren-
tine, viola player Maxine Roach and a children’s choir, is the
third in a series for Verve, preceded by You Gotta Pay the Band
with Stan Getz, which was a jazz hit, and in 1990 another
apocalyptic title, The World Is Falling Down, with Jackie
McLean, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Clark Terry and
pianist Alain Jean-Marie.

There is a strong sense that this is something of a
renaissance period in her work. A revolutionary needs pati¬
ence: beliefs that once damaged her career have now become
almost obligatory. Many of the issues on which she was so
outspoken or the organisations with which she associated have

74sWIRE

Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln

Burning, JFK and Spike Lee’s forthcoming Malcolm X biopic to
the outpouring of legitimate rage, folk legend and bile in the
work of Public Enemy, Ice Cube and Professor Griff; from the
resurgence of the Nation of Islam and black nationalism to the
product-polemics of X caps or the African hairstyles she once
pioneered, the pot that came to a boil in the 60s is back on the
burner. This time, it’s for sale.

Here is a process which Abbey Lincoln deeply resents. Not
only does she see herself, the actress (as she once was) on TV
reruns of Mission Impossible ; she also sees the era of civil rights
struggles, when she and Max Roach were playing benefits for
Malcolm X, the N.A.A.C.P. or the Black Muslims, replayed
in chaotic gloss at the cinema, on TV, or heard through the

she says. “We don’t talk about it, but Africans didn’t get to
America only through the auspices of the Europeans. We sold
our ancestors’ souls,” she spits, “and we need to talk about it.
And they’re still selling us here. We still sell each other for
money and for prestige. They should have left Malcolm alone.
I’ve learned to dislike all of these stories that they tell because
they’re none of them true. Exaggerations! It’s the downfall of
the nation. Everything is not for sale, and when it is, you can
kiss the baby goodbye.”

Interwoven in this idea is her profound objection to the
risible portrayal of Billie Holiday’s life in Lady Sings the Blues ,
a biopic produced by a black entrepreneur, Tamla Motown's
Berry Gordy. This was a turning point, she believes, in the
appropriation of real narratives, so effortlessly reconstituted in
the pursuit of entertainment, not to mention the personal
myth fixations of producers, screenwriters and directors. The
erasure of Charlie Parker’s rhythm section for the soundtrack of
Clint Eastwood’s Bird can also be linked to ancient African
history, she claims: “When Egypt was falling, that’s what the
kings did. They took somebody’s inscriptions — their names -
off and put their own. Wicked.”

“Sometimes I say I will never talk about him anymore because
people exaggerate the importance he had in my life,” she
admits wearily, but then credits him with handing her the
vision to see beyond the exploitative humiliations of her early
career. Ironically, considering the vituperation she aims at pop
music, her big break as an actress came from The Girl Can’t
Help It, one of the best rock ’n’ roll films of the 50s.

A celebration of the leer, rather than the look or the gaze,
the film not only featured one of the weirdest Freudian
sub-text extended smut jokes in film history (briefly: Phil
Silvers and his ejaculating milk bottle/Jayne Mansfield and her

two “cocked” milk bottle breast guns), but also squeezed
Abbey Lincoln into a red fishtail dress once worn by Marilyn
Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Singing a gospel song
while Mansfield wiggled to the powder room, Lincoln was
included peripherally, not without her knowledge because, as
she says, “Mama didn’t raise me to be foolish like that”, in a

Mansfield, Lincoln and Julie London were valued for*their
augmented cleavage as much as any other attributes. Lincoln
stole the red dress when the film was finished and took it with
her to South America, but like a magic force in a fairy tale, the
dress began to upstage her. “I got a reputation for being sexy,”
she says, and with a press agent who successfully presented her
as an “available woman” and album covers which zoomed in on
the cleavage, she found her image running out of control.

It was Max Roach who said, "Abbey, you don’t have to do
that.” After Lincoln had met him in Los Angeles, Roach
introduced her to many musicians, from Thelonious Monk and
John Coltrane to Olatunji and Sonny Rollins. They married,
recorded and divorced, during which time she acquired her
reputation as a woman who talks too much. “Freedom Now Suite
made things difficult for me,” she says. “A lot of people,
performers, said, ‘Abbey, you should shut up.’ I wouldn’t heel

Instead, she acted in films, putting herself in the position of
the most successful black female actress of her time but then
letting it all go. “I never sought out a career as an actress,” she

you’re an actress.” Then in 1973 she visited Guinea and Zaire

vith Mirk

i Makel
ka respectively in each country

> the nam

flc ancestors. Confused by her father’s English
nother’s Irish name, her mixed African and
ican blood, she wanted to find her place as an

shington Heights, New York City, she
le on the planet when people say
apocalyptic times are upon us,
/four of Michael Jackson and
s tangible proof of the last days.
;et any worse than this. Maybe

d to the tii

things

16s WIRE

COLTRANE

Olivier Messiaen

Dostoievsky maintained that he wrote his
fiction in travail and pain of soul, that he wanted it to be full
of life’s authenticity, its immediacy. Yet when his notebooks
came to light they revealed how carefully he had planned each
of his novels. The music of Olivier Messiaen, who died in
April this year, is rather like that, leading us to suspect his
perceptions were more violent than those of other people,
reverberating along nerves that were more taut. No wonder if
at first hearing the results often seem like a wild scattering of
discords, uncontrolled at the centre. Some of his pieces sound
orgiastic: the sky might fell in at any moment. And yet no art
is more meticulously consistent in its methods, the cause and
effect of each explosion calculated precisely.

Messiaen soon met the kind of vilification that attended
Schoenberg, Bartok and Stravinsky in their early years, and
while that does not prove he was of the same stature it did
provoke an equal and opposite reaction in his favour. The
polemics are no longer of interest, except that Messiaen’s
apologists claimed his “religiosity” was a red herring. Nothing
could be further from the truth, for there was an indissoluble
link between his steadfast religious beliefs and the single-
minded development of his musical activities, always con¬
cerned with the exploration of new forms and new content. He
was a Christian mystic with strong pantheistic leanings, able
not only to express in some of his works magical beliefs from
other cultures but to absorb methods and actual materials from
sources that formerly would have seemed infinitely remote
from the European tradition.

Messiaen had a fertile, which is to say highly cultured,
family background, with parents who encouraged the strong
feeling of musical vocation which early declared itself. Both
were prominent literary figures, his father the translator of
Shakespeare’s complete works into French, his mother the
poetess Cecile Sauvage. His first significant discovery was
Debussy’s opera Pelleas et Melisande , not only for its music but
also for its symbolism, which had affinities with his mother’s
poetry, this having religious overtones that were matched by
his father's involvement with the mystical writings of
Swedenborg. Such factors led to Messiaen’s openness to
extra-musical influences and to other cultures.

His originality was as great as that of Stravins¬
ky, Bartok or Schoenberg and his music as deeply rooted in the
past, as is the work of all genuinely creative artists. But its
sources were indeed more various than theirs, springing from a
whole range of different backgrounds - from Peru ( Harawi) to
Papua {lie de feu I and II) — and implying a variety of presents
and futures. Messiaen first studied locally in Avignon, where
he was born in 1908, and then from the age of 11 at the Paris
Conservatoire, where the most interesting of his teachers were
Paul Dukas for composition and Marcel Dupre for the organ

TO THE

CITY

CELESTIAL

Max Harrison pays tribute to the great
French composer Olivier Messiaen,
who died this year aged 83.
Illustration: Julian Kulpa.

and improvisation. On leaving he became organist at the
church of Sainte Trinite, Paris, a post he held for some 40
years. Fine pianist though he was, his real instrument was the
organ, and there is no doubt that its sound in those spacious
precincts had a continuing effect on his music. Considering

Sunday mass at Sainte Trin
dissonance. But

^positional d

te were regularly criticised for their
n them that he evidently made
;, and his innovations often

appeared in his organ works before they surfaced elsewhere-in
his output.

In fact one of the most remarkable things about Messiaen is
that, for all his modernity and the exotic sources of some of his
materials and methods, he was a part of the long French
tradition of organ composition. It is altogether typical of him
that a work such as the Livre d’orgue (1951) should employ
unaltered Hindu rhythms (see especially No. 5, the second
Piece en trio , in his collection), make a personal and very
imaginative use of 12-note technique, and yet still be at once
identifiable as a product of that organ tradition. Indeed his
place in it was made clear early on with La nativite du Seigneur
(1935) and Les corps glorieux (1939), even if their modernity,
again, still retains its impact, as it does in the Messe de la
Pentecote (1950) and Livre du Saint Sacrement. This latter piece
was completed in 1984 and was among his final major
narising his contribution to French organ music,

; of Bach.

However, if Messiaen’s place in that tradition is unex¬
pected, his position in contemporary music as a whole is even
more surprising. This arose from his status as that paradoxical

own path through the jungle, standing resolutely outside any
mainstream of recent musical thought, refusing to confine

181 WIRE

Olivier Messiaen

technical skill and experience still made him much sought

figure in French music between Debussy and Boulez, which
spread Messiaen’s influence so broadly. For present purposes it
might almost be enough to note that Boulez and Stockhausen
were among his pupils. But his teaching began in 1936 at the
Schola Cantorum and the Ecole Normale de Musique, Paris.
He was appointed Professor of Harmony at the Paris Conserva¬
toire in 1942 and during 1943-7 he gave semi-private
seminars in analysis and composition. It was during these that
he introduced his famous analysis of Stravinsky’s Le sacre du
printemps. He taught abroad, most significantly at Darmstadt
1950-53, but most importantly a class in musical analysis was
created for him at the Paris Conservatoire in 1947. This he
conducted for almost 20 years and it won unique status as a
“super composition class” in which he not only gave lucidly
passionate analyses of Pelleas , Beethoven string quartets and a
huge diversity of musical literature but ventured far beyond
conservatoire subjects to Greek metres, Hindu rhythms and

Messiaen encountered Greek rhythms with Dupre and
another of his Conservatoire teachers, Maurice Emmanuel, and
he continued to study them independently. On the Hindu side
he spent much time with the Salgita-Ratndkara , a 13 th-

analysing their rhythmic content and investigating their
religious and philosophical symbolism. Only in a few works
such as the Livre d’orgue does he use Hindu rhythms un¬
changed, but the influence of the de^i-tales pervades his
compositions, where they are assimilated and developed for his
own ends with much imagination. As these pieces would lead
us to expect, he was especially concerned with techniques for
altering rhythms, by constant and varying augmentation and
diminution, by the adding and subtracting of elements, by the
combining and segmentation of rhythms. His Technique de mon
langage musical (Paris, 1944; English translation, London,
1957) explains what he did in this field and many others.

Though emphasis had rightly been placed on the effect of
Greek and Hindu rhythmic practices on Messiaen, develop-

important to him. For example, given his concern with
odd-numbered rhythms, in symmetrical and asymmetrical
combinations of different rhythms with permutations and
overlappings, he found much of interest in Printemps by Claude
Lejeune (c 1528-1600), one of the most original composers of
the 16th century. This employed in its 39 choruses what
Lejeune called “vers measures a l’antique”, and he was extolled
by his contemporaries as the first to add to “the affective and

subtle rhythmic skill of the ancients and to fuse it with the
harmonic perfection attained during the last two centuries.”
Of course, Messiaen could be said to have done the same in a
later age, and it is, once more, characteristic that his tribute to
Lejeune should have taken the form of the choral Cinq rechants

Isolde legend with Hindu rhythms extended in non-
retrogradable patterns via augmentation and diminution.

the rhythmic practice of Stravinsky and Debussy in particular.
In his analysis of Le sacre he identified “personages rythmi-
ques”, which are rhythmic structures that stay recognisable
even when subject to augmentation and diminution in sym¬
metrical and asymmetrical ways. Debussy was still more of an
influence, rhythm being freed, in his most characteristic
works, from pulse, tonality, and barlines, making room for
many independent rhythmic figures that cannot be fitted to a
basic pulse. The consequences for Messiaen are obvious, the
abandonment of barlines especially allowing great scope for the
use of rhythmic cells that are extended in independent
structures leading to very complex counterpoint.

For structural purposes harmony was as crucial
to Messiaen as rhythm, but perhaps we ought to speak more
simply of pitches, durations - and colours. Indeed, “rhythm”

much worked out in “rhythmic relationships” as in what more
cumbersomely might be called relationships between different
groups of sound-durations. The point is underlined by Chro-
nochromie (I960) for large orchestra, its title deriving from two
Greek words, chronos — time, and chroma — colour, which
indicate the form-building roles of the notes’ time values and

above all for its complex treatment of time durations.

“Colour” was never a metaphor so far as Messiaen was
concerned, and he often said that he saw colours when writing
or hearing music (as did Scriabin). He composed sounds rather
as an artist mixes his paints, and was fully aware of the

colours. Again the organ, with its vast scope for mixing stops,
was an obvious influence, and this duly affected his piano
music, which embodies an almost disconcertingly wide range
of new textures and colours.

All these factors led to great contrapuntal and harmonic
complexity, though traditional patterns of tension and relaxa¬
tion no longer operate in Messiaen’s harmony. This situation
descended from Debussy’s sustained use of unresolved disso¬
nance to subvert the normal functions of harmonic cadences,
but whereas in Debussy the emotion is diffused, in Messiaen it
is intense, highly subjective, the effect disturbing precisely

5HWIRE

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Ed HOWARD-FRL-CD 007 FRL-CD011

Olivier Messiaen

good illustrations of this even in Le banquet celeste (1928), an
early organ piece. And in such works there are so many added
notes that the chords in any case lose their traditional
functions. Sometimes, also, a very slow tempo serves to
emphasise the effect of every chord, breaking down our
well-conditioned sense of musical time and hence of harmonic
expectation and fulfillment - as in the chorale at the end of the
“Trois petites liturgies”. The result is the creation of a feeling
of continual flux in which every sound has significance.
Non-developing harmonies give rise to melodic arabesques
which parallel the melismatic idioms of various Eastern

latterly so far from functional European harmony as to be
derived from raga-like formations, either traditional or his

Seeking far and wide in his studies of rhythm, harmony and

thorough going investigation of birdsong. First invoked in his
Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1940) and Turangalila-symphonie
(1946-8), this interested the composer from boyhood and he
spent considerable time in the wild writing down their songs,
employing traditional notation and without a tape recorder
(anyone who imagines this is easy should try it). The
accumulated material became another major resource, gradual-

Oiseaux exotiques (1955, both for piano and orchestra, and the
great Catalogue d’oiseaux (1956-8) for solo piano, whose 13
large movements quote birds from many parts of France, all
notated by Messiaen and integrated into a musical language
already highly wrought in an extraordinary feat of imagination
and compositional technique. Indeed, birdsong enabled him

as the Quatre etudes de rhythme (1949-50), above all the highly
influential Mode de valeurs et d’intensites, with its serialisation of

terms of 20th-century compositional technique, fervently
embracing all its (non-electronic) aspects but using them, with
perfect mastery, to ends that were often completely unex¬
pected. This is why if we study his pieces in the order in which
they were written we find they become more difficult. We

not just new but are opposed to many tendencies in modern
culture. Great music can be experienced in a variety of ways,
and one approach to Messiaen’s is as an answer to the spectacle
of aimless transience and waste that the contemporary world
presents.

Related yet very different achievements such as Chronochro-
mie, Vingt regards sur Venfant Jisus , Couleurs de la cite celeste,
Cantijodjaya , Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorem and St Francois
dAssise leave the air thin and dry afterwards. The latter is
almost a finale summation not only of all aspects of Messiaen’s

Meanwhile Messia

I’au-dela , had its world premiere this October. Not that this
marked any real end. His legacy will be working itself out in
the music of his pupils, and their pupils, and the many others
he influenced, for a great number of years to come. Like
Berlioz, he was the archetype of the hypersensitive Romantic
artist to whom discretion is unknown. Such people court

however, is among the finest music we have, constituting a

?IWIRE

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071 344 4444 Coventry

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Snage Jazz at the
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Jazz for the New Year:
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Concert Hall, Suffolk

Pianist Julian Joseph: arguably the
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Orphy Robinson and Annavas:
‘Zorro of the Vibes’, Orphy
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The Critics’

CHOICE

1992

Minimalisr

As the year’s end approaches, we have once again polled our nonpari
n their favourite records from the last twelve months. This year
the form of an all-inclusive, open-ended category - contributors we
their favourite records across all genres, from jazz to Techno, opera to Africa, metal
find a more comprehensive listing of the year’s finest music anywhere,
always, with Jazz & Improvised getting a special extended vote.

The agrarian rap of Arrested Development’s 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days . . . and the Black Jazz progressions of
Don Byron’s Tuskegee Experiment proved the most popular records with our critics across a variety of charts,
even though Joe Henderson’s lustrous Lush Life justed edged Don out of pole position in the Jazz & Improvised
chart.

RECORDS OF THE YEAR

1 3 Years, 3 Month & 2 Days . . . arrested
DEVELOPMENT (Cooltempo)

2 Tuskegee Experiment DON BYRON (Elektra Nonesuch)

3 Naked Lunch: Original Soundtrack ORNETTE COLEMAN/

4 Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury disposable heroes of
HIPHOPRISY (Fourth & Broadway)

5 Pieces Of Africa KRONOS QUARTET (Elektra Nonesuch)

7 Dirty SONIC YOUTH (GefFen)

8 Slanted And Enchanted PAVEMENT (Big Cat)

9 The Confessions Of Isabel Gowdie JAMES MACMILLAN (Koch)

10 Check Your Head BEASTIE BOYS (Capitol)

11 Harvest Moon NEIL YOUNG (WEA)

12 Laser Guided Missiles SPIRITUALIZED (Dedicated)

13 Bone Machine TOM WAITS (Island)

14 Ritual Beating System BAHIA BLACK (Axiom)

15 Pretend We're Dead L7 (Slash)

1 6 Nerve Net BRIAN ENO (Opal)

17 To The Eyes Of Creation Courtney pine (Island)

18 Pure GODFLESH (Earache)

19 Lush Life JOE HENDERSON (Verve)

20 Symphony No 3 HENRYK GORECKI (Elektra Nonesuch)

21 It Was A Dark And Stormy Night NICHOLAS COLLINS

22 Every Man And Woman Is A Star ultramarine (Brianiak)

23 Night Spirit Masters gnawa music of Marrakesh

24 Play With Toys DC BASEHEAD (Imago)

25 Accelerator FUTURE SOUND OF LONOON (Jumpin' &

28 First Programme In StandardTime NEW YORK COMPOSERS
ORCHESTRA (New World)

27 Doo-Bop MILES DAVIS (WEA)

28 The Protecting Veil JOHN TAVENER (Virgin Classics)

29 Hydra-Calm MAIN (Situation 2)

30 Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis) PRAXIS (Axiom)

Chart compiled from the votes of Mike Atherton, Ed Baxter, Kodwo Eshun,
Hopey Glass, Louise Gray, Andy Hamilton, Max Harrison, Tony
Herrington, David Hie, Nick Kimberley, BibaKopf, K. Martin, Kenny
Mathieson, Brian Morton, Stuart Nicholson, Simon Reynolds, Jonathan
Romney, Richard Scott, Mark Sinker, Nick Terry, Ben Thompson, David
Toop, Ben Watson, Philip Watson, Barry Witherden and Robert Yates.

Also recommended: Soul Murder Barry Adamson (Mute), Dance
Rajah Dance Vijaya Anana (Luaka Bop), Little Earthquakes Tori
Amos (East West), Weaving My Ancestor’s Voices Sheila Chandra
(Real World), Cypress Hill Cypress Hill (Ruff House), Guerillas
In Tha Mist Da Lench Mob (Street Knowledge), Greatest Misses
Public Enemy (Def Jam), Pieces For More Than Two Pianos
Morton Feldman (Sub Rosa), The Screens Philip Glass & Foday
Musa Suso (Point), Gospel Evangelists God’s Mighty Hand
(Gospel Heritage), 3 AM Eternal KLF (KLF), Schlaf Schlemmer,
Schlaf Magritte Franz Koglmann (hat Art), Bach: Goldberg
Variations Wanda Landowska (RCA), XYZ Moose (Hut),
Onobox Yoko Ono (Rykodisc), Discosphere }ohn Oswald (ReR),
Parisian Portraits Enrico Pieranunzi (Ida), Not Just Sentimental
Otis Redding (Stax), Down Colourful Hill Red House Painters
(4AD), Runaway Slave Showbiz & AG (Payday), Scott Walker
1-4 (Fontana), Copeland: Old American Songs Willard White
(Chandos).

JOE

HENDERSON

A v >•

-~=%. j.'

13 Duos PETER KOWALD (FMP)

14 At Sundown Humphrey lyttelton/acker bilk

(Calligraph)

15 The Vibe ROY HARGROVE (Novus)

16 Shakill's Warrior DAVID MURRAY (DIW)

17 Big Shots bevan/rogers/noble (Incus)

18 Circular Temple MATTHEW SHIPP TRIO (Quinton)

19 Paraphernalia MILES DAVIS (JMY)

20 Grace Under Pressure JOHN SCOFIELD (Blue Note)

21 Dutch Masters mengelberg/lacy/lewis/reyseger/

JAZZ & IMPROVISED

1 Lush Life \Ot HENDERSON (Verve)

2 Tuskegee Experiment DON BYRON (Elektra Nonesuch)

4 foom! foom! HESSION/WILKINSON/FELL (Bruce's Fingers)

5 Naked Lunch: Original Soundtrack ornette coleman/
HOWARD SHORE (Milan)

6 The Waiting Game CLAIRE MARTIN (Linn)

7 From The Soul JOE lovano (Blue Note)

8 Dance To The Drums Again Cassandra wilson (DIW)

9 Visions & Blueprints b-shops for the poor/peter

10 It's Not About The Melody BETTY CARTER (Verve)

11 Take It To The Street rebirth brass band (Rounder)

12 Where In The World? bill frisell (Elektra Nonesuch)

22 To The Eyes Of Creation COURTNEY PINE (Island)

23 Solo Guitar Vol. 2 DEREK BAILEY (Incus)

24 Bluish TOMASZ STANKO (Power Bros)

25 To The Max! MAX ROACH (Enja)

26 Up A Lazy River LEON redbone (Private Music)

27 First Aural Art Exhibition BILLY JENKINS (VOTP)

29 The Darlington Concert keith tippett (Editions EG)

30 Doo-Bop miles davis (WEA)

Chart compiled from the votes of Catherine Bassindale {Take It To The
Street), Ed Baxter (Gumption In Limbo -Tom Cora), Karen Bennett
{Shadows - Gary Barn), Richard Cook {Live In Soft's Cellar-Jan

Max Harrison {Bin Blu Blu - Muhal Richard Abrams), Tony Herrington
(NakedLunch), Davidllic {Tuskegee Experiment), K. Martin (Naked
Lunch), Kenny Mathieson {Lush Life), Brian Morton (Schlaf Schlemmer,
Schlaf Magritte - Franz Koglmann), Stuart Nicholson (Tuskegee
Experiment). Jonathan Romney (Where In The World?), Richard Scott
(Solo Guitar), Mark Sinker (Tuskegee Experiment), Ben Watson (foom!
foom!), Philip Watson (Paraphernalia), Barry Witherden (Bluish) and
Adele Yaron (Celebration). Each contributor's number one vote is shown in

•25IWIRE

‘OUT’ROCK

1 Hydra-Calm MAIN (Station 2)

2 Pure GODFLESH (Earache)

3 Slanted & Enchanted PAVEMENT (Big Cat)

4 Dirty SONIC youth (Geffen)

5 Der Abend Der Schwarzen Folklore CASPAR brotzmann
MASSAKER (Rough Trade)

4 Love Of Life SWANS (Young God)

7 Hits THE BIRTHDAY PARTY (4AD)

8 Buried Secrets PAIN KILLER (Earache)

10 Fontanelle BABES IN TOYLAND (Southern)

Chart compiled from the votes of Ed Baxter, Hopey Glass, Davidllic, Biha
Kopf, K. Martin, Simon Reynolds, Jonathan Romney, Nick Terry, Ben
Thompson and Ben Watson.

MODERN COMPOSITION

1 Symphony No. 3 HENRYK GORECKI (Elektra Nonesuch)

2 The Confessions Of Isabel Gowdie JAMES MACMILLAN (Koch)

3 Violin ConcertolThree Occasions For Orchestra ELLIOT CARTER
(Virgin Classics)

4 The Protecting Vrr/jOHN TAVENER (Virgin Classics)

5 The Death Of Klinghoffer JOHN ADAMS (Elektra Nonesuch)

4 Bryars/NymanIWestbrook JOHN harle (Argo)

7 La Lontananza FuturalHay Que Caminar Sonando LUIGI
NONO (DG)

8 Vingt Regards Sur L’Enfant Jesus OLIVIER MESSIAEN
(Unicorn)

9 The Repentant Thief JOHN TAVENER (Collins)

10 In The Beginning/Music To Celebrate The Resurrection Of
Christ ROBERT SAXTON (Collins)

Chart compiled from the votes of Louise Gray, Andy Hamilton, Max
Harrison, Kenny Mathieson, Brian Morton, Ben Watson and Barry
Witherden.

OPERA

1 Or/eo Ed Euridice GLUCK, cond. Frieder Bernius (Sony)

2 Guilio Cesare HANDEL, cond. Rene Jacobs (Harmonia
Mundi)

3 Pelleask Mehsande DEBUSSY, cond. Claudio Abbado (DG)

4 Les bides Galantes RAMEAU, cond. William Christie

5 Siegfried WAGNER, cond. James Levine (DG)

6 Queen Of Spades TCHAIKOVSKY, cond. Seiji Ozana (BMG)

7 Oedipus Rex Stravinsky, cond. Esa-Pekka Salonen

(Sony)

8 The Ice-Break TIPPETT, cond. David Atherton (Virgin
Classics)

9 Caritas SAXTON, cond. Diego Masson (Collins Classics)

10 Otello verdi, cond. Gustav Kuhn (Koch)

Chart compiled by Nick Kimberley

26IWIRE

4 Eyes Open YOUSSOU n’douR (40 Acres & A Mule)

5 Binton Sidibe Vol 2 BINTON SID1BE (EMI Abijan)

6 Khaled CHEB KHALED (Barclay)

7 Live At Olympia YOUSSOU n’dour (Saprom)

8 Zahar HASSAN HAKMOUN (Knitting Factory)

9 Coumba Sidibe COUMBA SIDIBE (Syllart/Melodie)

10 Ibrahim Hamma Dicko ibrahim hamma dicko (Melodic

David Toop

LATIN

1 Ritual Beating System BAHIA BLACK (Axiom)

2 The Other Side Of This AIRTO MOREIRA (Rykodisc)

3 La Fuerza Mayor CHUCHO nuncira (Tumi)

4 Villa Hi Ida lgo GIOVANNI HIDALGO (Messidor)

5 Afoxe ERNIE watts/gilberto GIL (CTI)

DANCE

1 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days . ARRESTED
DEVELOPMENT (Cooltempo)

2 Every Man And Woman Is A Star ultramarine (Brainiak)

3 Accelerator future sound of London (Jumpin' &

4 PFordg BABY FORD (Transglobal)

5 Revival MARTINE GIRAULT (FFRR)

6 Hypocrisy Is The Greatest L
HIPHOPRISY (Fourth & Broadway)

7 Check Your Head BEASTIE BOYS (Capitol)

8 Play With Toys DC BASEHEAD (Imago)

9 Stakker Humanoid humanoid (Jumpin' St Pumpin')

10 Daily Operation gangstarr (Cooltempo)

Chart compiled from the votes of Catherine Bassmdale. Kodwo Eshun ,
Gray, Tony Herrington, K. Martin, Ben Thompson, David Toop an,

■288W1RE

INTERNATIONAL/DOCUMENTARY

1 Batak Of North Sumatra VARIOUS (New Albion)

2 Raagdari pandit jasrat (Weston)

3 Croatian Folk Songs & Dances various (Harmonia Mundi)

4 Sufi Music Of Turkey kudsi erguner (CMP)

5 Polyphonies Of Albania FAMILLE LELA DE PERMET (Indigo)

6 Tuva: Voices From Central Asia various (Smithsonian
Folkways)

7 Flamenco Collection VARIOUS (Le Chant Du Monde)

8 The Voice Of Tradition gangubai hangal (Welt Music)

9 Polyphonies Of Sardinia various (Le Chant Du Monde)

10 Stringed Instruments Of Vietnam VARIOUS (World Music

Chart compiled by Richard Scott

JAZZ REISSUES

1 Get Up With It Vols. 1 & 2 miles davis (Line)

2 The Major Works JOHN COLTRANE (GRP/Impulse!)

3 The Saturn Reissues sun ra (Evidence)

4 Sextant HERBIE HANCOCK (Sony Japan)

5 Let My Children Hear Music CHARLES MINGUS (Colombia)

i Spiritual Unity ALBERT AYLER (ESP/2YX)

7 Tauhid PHAROAH SANDERS (MCA Japan/Impulse!)

8 Three Day Moon BARRE PHILLIPS (ECM)

9 First Meditations (For Quartet) JOHN COLTRANE (GRP/

10 Charles Tyler Ensemble CHARLES TYLER ENSEMBLE

(ESP/2YX)

Chart compiled by K. Martin

BLUES

1 Complete 1947-61 muddy waters (Charly)

2 Young Girl Blues sue foley (Antones)

3 Complete Aladdin Recordings LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS (EMI)

4 Blues Brother JOHN lee hooker (Ace)

5 Complete Imperial Recordings 1950-54 T-BONE WALKER
(EMI)

6 Live At El Mocambo WALTER HORTON (Red Lightnin')

7 He Knows The Blues OTIS GRAND (Sequel)

8 Blues Deluxe ROY brown (Charly)

9 Nightime Is The Rightime henry GRAY (Sunland)

10 Delta Bluesman HONEYBOY EDWARDS (Indigo)

Chart compiled from the votes of Mike Atherton and Nick Kimberley

29SWIRE

JSWIRE

32SWIRE

Neneh Cherry

continued on page 97 ii!WIRE

Easy Listening

. . . and the

LISTENING

IS

EASY

Adele Yaron relaxes into the story of
music’s most despised genre, and finds it
might still have a surprising ending.

Ask yourself: what have Frank Sinatra, Bob
Dylan and Nick Berry all got in common? The answer's
simple, surprising, a little difficult to take: they’re all Easy
Listening. Their various fens will be appalled by the notion
that so creative and frankly difficult a talent as Dylan can be so
casually linked with Ol’ Blue Eyes the Duke of Smooth - and
as for the marginally qualified EastEnders cast-off Wicksy . . .

progressive records of their day end up filed under Easy
Listening alongside the purest dross.

There’s no official definition, but Easy Listening music is
clearly perceived by most as mid-tempo, middle-aged and
middle-of-the-road. As a category, it definitely calls for
hushed tones, if not a brown paper bag. Dismissed by many as

growth areas in the industry. But with such a hefty image

are signs it’s becoming extinct.

an Easy Listening track? Herein lies the
ways “Easy Listening” is a contradiction in
Melody Radio — London’s nonstop mellow
abandon the actual art of listening, and t
simple, in Easy Hearing. The idea of r

noise. And of course people also relax tc

problem. In many

indulge, pure and

straightforward mood music. It may well be emotive, but
passively - the last thing it is for is deliberately stirring a
turmoil of feeling. Jazz standards and moody ballads generally

And sometimes we’re talking plain oldMOR - Middle Of
The Road music, an amalgamation of the above. There’s
definitely cross-over here, but defining Sarah Vaughan, Eartha
Kitt or Billie Holiday as MOR is surely to sell them somewhat
short.

It must be safe to assume that most of you reading this are
in some ways familiar with the material in question. From
dinner parties to supermarkets to lifts and beyond, a certain

should any music be forever handcuffed to the frozen peas?

in alongside the Timeless Classics? The fact is, such a wide
range of material is encompassed by these general attempts at
categorisation that the label is rendered meaningless. In order
to give it a meaning, it is necessary to delve into the depths of

34$\

Easy Listening

358WIRE

Easy Listening

certainly to renounce any modicum of street credibility. Yet
the flip side of this is a certain je ne sais quoi associated with
some of these old-timers: Sacha Distel, Peggy Lee or Harry
Belafonte. The image, the way of life, this total embodiment
of social reassurance, comfort .and security. In short, it looks as
if we new Easy Listeners are all yearning for a quality of life
associated with days gone by. Not so surprising really, in the

lOIOl'x*"" BLACK COFFEE Hitt PlBT L« JlHH

current economic climate. On the part of the record com¬
panies, the perceived unfashionability is outweighed by the
recognition of a desire for something sure in an unsure world.

The casual selection of tracks from the aptly-named
Music For Pleasure label, the compilations from K-Tel Inter¬
national - or, more recently, that tell-tale TV phrase “this
record is not available in the shops” - are all thinly-veiled
ploys to sell us Easy Listening without mentioning it. What
now signals a change in marketing practice is an increasing
willingness to bill the goods as such. Surprising at it may
seem, Prism Leisure advertises Sean Wilson as the new Easy
Listening star, selling over 250,000 copies of his recent record
without any promotion — surprising for us because we had such
a hard time getting hold of a review copy (surprising for you
because until now you’d never heard of him). But this of course
may be the very point. Easy Listening is music for people who
don’t want to read or talk about it. It is not concerned with any
level of intellectualisation - where “intellectualisation” even
extends down to Top Of The Pops. As a result it is able to

command a huge potential following. It is after all popular
music — it just happens always to have been lumbered with a
fuddy duddy image. The times they are a-changin’ ... as
Nick Berry will no doubt soon be saying.

As the radical, ex-pirate alternative to the BBC’s existing
stations (Home, Light and Third), Radio 1 was and remains
very different in tone from its counterparts. Yet the staples of
early Radio 1 would today sit far more comfortably on Radio
2. Like all areas of the media, the station has solved the riddle
of carrying with it regular listeners while at the same time
attracting a new audience. As Melody, now two years old, has
found, there’s a definite following for popular music where
there’s no image problem to contend with (15—24 year olds are
more willing to tune in than their immediate elders in the
25—34 age group). As Melody MD Sheila Porritt says, every
artist is a potential Easy Listening artist. So while French
loverboy Sacha Distel predictably charms his audience with
romantic love songs - mainly other people’s — on his latest
release Dedications , Pavarotti also scores in Melody’s Top Ten
Easy Listening Favourites (as voted by their listeners). There
was a time not so long ago when the big man himself would
only have made an impression on Radio 3.

So Easy Listening may simply represent the closest the
industry can get to sure-fire winners. Browsing through this
year’s December releases, there seems to be an overwhelming
predominance of what is essentially Easy Listening in all but
name. Columbia may look to Mr Berry (with his “50s/60 retro
feel”) or Neil Diamond (with his festive favourites — including
such all time greats as “Silent Night” and “Santa Claus is
Coming To Town”) to do it for them this Christmas; Polygram
may hope that Lionel Ritchie and Abba will be this year’s
stocking fillers. Seasonal as these trends may be, it’s not at all
surprising that with things as they are the record companies
are sticking with the tried and tested. Mainstream and
conformist, these are recordings with all the credentials of Easy
Listening, and more and more they are being marketed as
such. Mass market sales require mainstream appeal: mass
market sales are considered essential for the future of the
industry. And so nostalgia is in, in a big way.

There’s a term in America that’s now used to describe
music that might by general consensus be termed Easy
Listening: Beautiful Music. Apart from the fact that it raises
the question of what ugly music might be, it’s a great way of
tying up the whole deal-redefinition: hence extinction. Who
wants to be seen milling around the Easy Listening section
when one could be strutting in the Beautiful Music depart¬
ment? Perfect as an all embracing category and as a marketing
tool for an industry desperate to sell its wares, perhaps in time
it will be adopted over here and Easy Listening can at last take
its place in the annals of musical history. ■

35IWIRE

■

©

abouttime for a competition

WRAP YOURSELF IN THE PURE SOUL OF BLACK AMERICA. THE SOUL THAT WILL...

"TURN TIRED BLOOD INTO YOUNG BLOOD", "PUT YOU AND YOUR MAINSQUEEZE AT
EASE” AND "ADD THAT PEP TO YOUR SOUL STEP".

YOU TOO CAN BE ONE OF THREE LUCKY PEOPLE TO WIN CD'S WILLIE CLAYTON -
OPEN THE DOOR & SOUL'D TOGETHER VOL 2 TOGETHER WITH A SMART T-SHIRT

m

II

%

37SW1RE

Club Culture

OUTING THE

IN-CROWD

Rod wo Eshun
digs up the history
of Clubland UK,
from Boodles to
Style Wars to
all-day nights on
the CyberNet.

Dance don't riot! 80s street culture liked to pretend that clubbing was a criminal activity.

Total Clubbing Space has arrived. It’s now
possible to step into a club on Friday night and emerge 50
hours later on Monday morning, fit and — chemically? —
readied for work. This is the new clubbing regime, courtesy of
the updated licensing laws: along with juice bars, cinemas and

dom and frenzy, relaxation and euphoria. The tradition of the
week-ender, that exclusive all-out rush, has been modified and
democratised - everyone is invited, week in, week out.

What does this open-doors policy now do to Clubland’s
understanding of itself (the only notion that unites the many,
internecine club tribes) as an underground? Clubland’s eternal
rhetoric of liberation through desire, empowerment through
release, tells us it needs some things to stay forbidden, that it

We could just redraw the lines, and refuse to accept 1992 as
part of the authentic clubbing experience. But this would

simply ignore crucial history and the Rave Nation’s lobbying
for appropriate licensing laws, which announced in its own
language a decade-long push for extra time, for more space, for
more everything. Still, what happens when the government is
more radical than the underground? When clubbers get what
they want only to find it wasn’t, after all, what they wanted?

Think of the 80s as a series of escalating demands with
this moment as the apex. In 1981-83, the moment was one
which was yet to be named “style”. Every Man and Every
Woman is a Star — well, Aleister Crowley (and Sly Stone)
wanted us to believe this, but in an age when The Face adopted
a title from arrogant Mod jargon for the street-elite, you had to
acknowledge that some seemed more like stars than others.
Clubs like Taboo and Chacha catered for the few. Taking their
cue from the dazed ennui of Warhol’s Heat, Hustlers, etc, they
found each other endlessly fascinating, a fascination which

3SIWIRE

Club Culture

JSWIRE

Club Culture

On June 27th 1989, The Sun put it like this: SPACED OUT!
11,000 YOUNGSTERS GO DRUG CRAZY AT BRITAIN’S
BIGGEST EVER ACID PARTY.

come-togethers existed only in Soho, not in East London or the
illegality even when unnecessary, and played along with police

Dance With A Stranger and Absolute Beginners. The mid 80s
seems to have reactivated not just the laws but the stifled,
choked Soho-titillation of the late 50s and early 60s. As if
invoking one (mythological) moment, where pleasure sup¬
posedly threatened the social order, was the only way to
understand the landscape of youth culture in the 80s.

Such a subterranean continuity, from pre-Beatles to post¬
punk pop-London, points up one inherited relationship of
inclusion and exclusion. Rave organisers literally turned their
back on this relationship. Sunrise left London altogether,
headed for the home counties, forseeing a rural communion
still observed today. They regarded urban clubbing as another
paragraph of the same old subcultural pop-narrative: trads,
teds, mods, rockers, hippies, punks, clubbers. They scathing¬
ly argued that clubs were segregationist, the unwitting dupes
of the establishment. Ravers saw themselves as the first ever

intent) some Deep-structure Albion inside Merrie Eng¬
land which all their predecessors had been too busy defying the

For their part, such London clubs as Boys Own, still aristos
at heart, accused Rave of encouraging and exploiting a mass
uniformity on a scale never before seen in England. This
schism in Clubland persists today.

In 1992 , the Total Clubbing Space begins to look like a

reverse. Whether or not this is a belated attempt to heal the
gap between anti-club ravers and anti-rave clubbers, the
assumption that Clubland is the multiformat expression of
clubbing has clearly, finally, broken down. In 1992, Clubland

of its own. Techno and rap begin to realise that they are musics
with no associated visual dimension. Meta-retro bands - like
The Sandals - flaunt precisely the artifice which Rare Groove
tried to hide. Soundtrack DJs like the Karminsky Experience
play a deliberately back-ground music - the crowd “become”
the visuals and everyone acts as if somewhere else, far away

These are examples of how Clubland isn’t feeding back into

outwards, towards places which don’t yet exist. These, at
least, are the thoughts provoked by Guy Nisbett, one half
(with Vivian Baker) of First Light Virtual Design, a company

“You have to realise London Clubland has always been about
multiple realities. Why all those guys in California never made

Nisbett explains Virtual Clubbing in the following way:

ments. You can choose to move around three regions -
FreeSpace, StreetSpace, which is various parts of London like
Soho, and HeadSpace, in people’s heads. We scan people in

interactively, to disappear inside their head.”

magazine does. But that’s an ingenuous analogy - VR is
exciting because it’s a new game for a few players, a game

will dramatically expand what does and doesn’t count as

its setting. Clubland is the medium which begins to manipu¬
late its messages. VR is where that message is estranged and
becomes accessible as new material. Suppose Clubland is a
machine for generating “inauthenticities” - breaking them
down, piling them up. VR isn’t going to be a value-free Born
Again Aesthetic realm. Nisbett believes we’ll see communica¬
tion, “with less filters than ever before.” Maybe. Just as likely
are Identity Wars which will make the style wars of the last
decade look like Disneyland. Phase one of those Wars, 1994 -
2004: played out in the StreetSpaces of Tokyo and California,
the HeadSpaces of George Clinton and Mixmaster Morris, the
skirmishes between who acts and who poses, who fakes and
who plays, they take a new and murderous turn as the answers
to what’s accessible and what’s off-limits accelerate beyond any
accepted justification. Chances are, the drives of transcendence
and identification which have powered Clubland to date will
be intensified, not resolved - and those who look best able to
navigate them will find themselves marked for sacrifice. ■

401W1RE

Music & Image

LONDON

EYE

AND

EAR

CONTROL

Photographer and long-time Wire contributor Andrew Pothecary
examines what it is he’s after when he takes a picture of a musician.

JSWIRE

Hermann Leonard's sh

43SWIRE

SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE

SUBSCRIBE

Attention! New subscribers! Last chance to subscribe at old rates! Save mega¬
bucks and claim a free CD into the bargain courtesy of Colombia''s Contemporary
Jazz Masters Series.

THE WIRE m HEART I

Music & Image

Courtney Pine

Courtney Pine is the
player who shook
British jazz out of
esoteric somnolence,
and led it into the
lifestyle-conscious
world.

Mark Sinker
wonders where he
can go next.

Jonathan
Oppong-W aife
caught him in transit.

48IWIRE

Music & Image

7SWIRE

Courtney Pine

50SWIRE

Courtney Pine

new album

To The Eyes Of Creation

CD & CASSETTE

and new single
“Redemption Song”
featuring Mica Paris

See Courtney play at London’s Jazz Cafe on
23 & 24 December

Competition!

Win copies of Courtney’s new album and single (we’ve ten
of each to give away) by telling us which of
Courtney’s albums has the most words in the title!

Send the answer to Courtney Competition, The Wire, 45-46
Poland Street, London W1V 3DF to reach us by 31 December.

ISLAND

Courtney Pine

528WIRE

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TTING EDGE

A Wire first! Seven pulsing pages of hot

holiday suggestions. Michael Gillard, Andy Hamilton,

Art Lange and James Dyson rhapsodise

the locations where the discerning music-lover

should book next summer’s vacation.

Holiday 93

Davis’s ground breaking Bitches Brew.

Ruy Bias opened his account at Polydor with the amateurish
Luna Llena {Full Moon), recorded in May 1975 and released as a

become the core of Dolores, the band wasn’t officially christ¬
ened until 1976.

Badly recorded and produced by Polydor, the record began
an acrimonious five-year relationship which earned him the
reputation of troublemaker within the industry. Realising
Polydor had no very big plans for him, he declined commercial
moves on his next recording, and experimented with Brazilian
rhythms instead.

The result was the impressive and much-coveted album
Dolores , a huge departure. Instead of “meaningful” lyrics sung
in an impassioned flamenco style, Dolores offered a mature
experiment in brass and percussion - typified by pianist Tomas
San Miguel’s innovative composition “El Jaleo” (“The Rum-

“The release of Dolores coincided with great developments in
Spanish society,” says Ruy Bias. “It was the beginning of an

Society was very politicised. It was the era of the singer-
songwriter, but I wanted to do more as a musician. I was
playing drums, percussion and composing songs . . . but I
couldn’t find the lyrics to express all these feelings. So the
album only had one vocal track - “La Nina de los Montoya”.

“When the head of Polydor heard it, he almost fainted. On
the one hand the music was appealing, it had strength. But he
told me: ‘I think you’ve made a mistake not putting lyrics to

Ruy Bias raged at this assault on his creative freedom, and
refused to compromise, an attitude that would cost him dearly
with later projects. Eventually, in September 1976, Dolores
was released, without any publicity fanfare. “Naturally it
made no great impact. Of course it was recognised within
progressive circles, but I was quite disillusioned. And I

Vallet, a p/anist who unfortunately died recently but \Ls like a
father figure to the group. They proposed that we form a

indispensable. Such glasnost accounts for the high turnover of
musicians - 21 in all - who passed through the band. “Dolores
was representative of the best experimental musicians in

of the era with musical freedom,” says Pardo.

Early in 1977, Ruy Bias secured a further contract with
Polydor to record a third album, again as a solo artist.
However, by this time he had already formed Dolores. Hence
the symbolic (and pompously titled) release La Puerta Abierta
(The Open Door); Pedro Ruy Bias presents Dolores.

The line-up on Puerta included two South American percus¬
sionists, Venezuelan Cesar Berti and Colombian Alvarito “El
Chevere”, who, together with veteran Dolores bassist, Alvaro
Yebenes and Jean-Luc Vallet, added a slick Latin dimension to
the album, best illustrated by the awesome cut “Membrillo",
always high on any vinyl junkie’s wants list.

Puerta was undoubtedly their best album, though in Madrid
it again made little impact. “We were so involved in making
the kind of music we wanted to that little attention was paid
to how it would be received," recalls Jorge. “At that time there
was a great creative mood among those in the fusion world.
Like everybody else, we were fighting against tradition. We

that this type of music was highly marginalised in Spain, and
still is.”

Nevertheless, the album created a sufficient buzz to merit
an invitation to play at the San Sebastian Jazz Festival in 1977,
the first Spanish band to be so asked. But the best was yet to
come. A short while after the festival, he received a call from
flamenco guitar maestro Paco de Lucia, who said he liked the
flamenco feel on their albums, wanted the same sound and
asked if Ruy Bias would play percussion on his European tour.

Honoured, he nonetheless insisted that Paco also call Pardo
and Yebenes. At first reluctant to add a flute and electric bass

doing so he changed the face of modern flamenco music.

“I feel responsible for the introduction of certain new

of modesty. “Before the tour I was using Arabic bongos which
needed a lot of heat to keep the skins taut. Sometimes I would
apply garlic oil; the smell was horrendous! Anyway, by chance
I saw an Andean folk group in Madrid where one musician was
sitting on a wooden box (el cajon) playing it like a pair of
bongos. It made so many different sounds, I had to add it to
the band. Now, you don’t see many flamenco groups without a
flute, an electric bass or el cajon."

In April 1978, Dolores returned to the studio to record the
cryptically titled album Ana Nisi Masa with Paco de Lucia.
The title comes from a Federico Fellini film in which children
invent a secret language by adding an extra syllable to each

The band had once again changed dramatically, and now

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Holiday 93

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A small, leafy town in the Quebec countryside, its
largest industry the manufacture of hockey sticks. No haute
cuisine, not even a McDonalds: visiting writers must survive
on Tim Horton Donuts and what passes for pizza. The weather
in October is often a freezing drizzle. Why would anyone come
to Victoriaville? Answer: for the best New Music festival in
North America - arguably, given its decade-long track record.

What do they mean by Musique Actuelle , anyway? Using
translation as a shield, the phrase deflects the slings and arrows
of categorization. Some years it’s been composition, often the
flavour of the times (fortunately minimalism came and went
quickly). Lately, exotic, pseudo-improvised textures and ex¬
tended timbres seem to have taken over the notated page,
though you never know when some perky neo-Milhaud will
upset the experimental vibe. Improvisation has been and
remains a vital component, the foundation which the Festival
International Musique Actuelle/Victoriaville (FIMAV) (to give
it its full title) is built upon. But even though they invite the
Braxtons, the Taylors, and the Companys, they obviously
don’t take improvisation too seriously - how else to explain all
those second-rate rock bands over the years, with their artsy
attitudes, trying to resurrect the spirit of the Velvet Under¬
ground or Soft Machine? Consider too that from Year One the
fest’s blithe-soul-in-residence has been none other than Fred
Frith, invited back year after year to boost the status quo of
serious spontaneous composition.

I’ve made the Great Trek Northward for the last six fests,
and it really is like entering another world. The town is so
remote, with no other reason to be there except for the music,

travellers has gathered to celebrate the vibrancy and variety of
musics presented, to affirm the value of non-commercial
creativity, to search for the next New moment. A hearty crew,
they disdain the weather and hike the mile or so between
concerts (typically five a day, over five days at three different
sites, with no public transport), as strange sounds emerge from
streetlamp speakers along the main thoroughfare. (What must
the local thinks as they go out to do their daily shopping
accompanied by the squaks of Sun Ra or Rova?) Informality
reigns. At breakfast you can ask Evan Parker about his theories
of overdubbing, or Lol Coxhill where he finds his pocket-
change Casios, or simply rehash the previous day’s hits and
misses. In V’ville, everyone’s a critic, whether they write or
not. It’s a very knowledgeable audience.

Hits and misses are inevitable when a festival takes the
sort of programmatic risks FIMAV does. Over the years some
of the misses have been god-awful. I’ll never forget Terry
Riley’s dull cocktail piano/sax recital or a tedious and totally
mediocre performance piece from Robert Ashley, or the
stupefying League of Stepford Guitarists guru-ed by Robert
Fripp; the many bad or just plain boring performances
thankfully slip from memory. But highlights have outweighed
them (and more than a few of these are captured on Victo
discs). Frith’s full-speed collision with John Zorn was one
personal favourite; their duet saw the audience ducking alto
sax splinters and spare guitar parts. There was the convulsive
glee of the late, much lamented Hal Russell and his NRG
Ensemble, the masterful palette of Muhal Richards Abrams’

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Holiday 93

and Carlos Zingaro, a fiery post-Braxton quartet led by Louis
Sclavis, Braxton himself fronting an all-star septet and par¬
rying with Derek Bailey, the zen drama of a Leo Smith/Fred
Van Hove/Sabu Toyozumi trio, a German postmodern version
of a Chinese opera by Heiner Goebbels and Alfred 23 Harth,
the bracing chill of the Arditti Quartet, Marilyn Crispell solo,
Bar re Philips solo, Barry Guy solo . . .

And many more moments, obviously, including a few from
this year’s fest, the 10th annivesary, which continued the
long-standing practice of dividing time between European

special emphasis on established friends. Thus Braxton arrived
with his play-as-four-think-as-one quartet (Marilyn Crispell
continues to astonish) and amazed everyone by leaping into a

Alvin Curran’s Schtyx worked because it held a tense, preca¬
rious balance between “open field” sounds and theatrical

Phillips/Alain Joule-with-pre-recorded tapes didn’t.

Phillips redeemed himself with a beautiful arco duet with
Paul Rutherford’s trombone as part of the London Jazz
Composer’s Orchestra. Peopled with many of Britain’s Best,

composed jolts. The one moment that they came together was

underneath Evan Parker’s stunning solo.

muse of composition. A septet led by underrated Canadian

timbrerand African hi-life a la Pierre Dorge. Bill Frisell’s
tunes did Derome one better; normally a charming hodge¬
podge of easy going effects, one particular piece was built on
successive measures of calypso, waltz, oom-pah, polka, C&W,
reggae, flamenco, and gypsy tzigane. World music reducta ad
absurdum. Conversely, the Francois Houle band (his soprano and
clarinet the most interesting by far) failed to find a convincing
forum for their solos, and the Paul Plimley/Lisle Ellis/Greg

ignored convention and just blew.

This is what Musique Actuelle does to you. The fest’s
importance goes far beyond whether or not you enjoy a
particular performance; the onslaught of ideas changes per¬
manently the way one perceives, responds to and thinks about

a year off — might relocate, reschedule. I hope they stay exactly
as they’ve been. Even with the October weather, ten years of
thought-provoking, ambitious programming is nothing to
sneeze at. By Art Lange

spain is few people’s idea of the centre of anything, lei
done jazz. Yet frontier status between Europe and Africa ha:
:onferred advantages. Far away from the prim sophistication o:

ican and Northern European club circuits the struggle o:
Spanish musicians to bring together flamenco and jazz, two o:

headstrong musical offspring, is delivering

Holiday 93

the Southern States of America is akin to the earlier experience
of the Gypsies in the Southern Spanish region of Andalusia.

Having traversed the Middle East, Russia and Central
Europe following their expulsion from Rajastan in 1400 AD,
the Gypsies were recent arrivals in Spain just as the Catholic
Monarchs conquest of the Moors ushered in a new era of
xenophobia. As the Christian persecution of racially and
religiously “impure” minorities escalated to the horrors of the
Spanish Inquisition in the 16th century, the earliest form of
flamenco was heard. The “Cante Hondo”, or Deep Song,
became the grim lament of an outlawed people — an emotional
equivalent to the American Blues that emerged in the early
part of this century.

to the sounds and rhythms of Africa. The Inquisition united

Afro-Islamic culture in Spain fused with the Indo-Pakistani
traditions of the Gypsies to produce flamenco, a word which

from

The independent Gypsies survived the Mooi
it but their one-time comrades’ African legac
noted in the words of Gypsy singer Manuel

bsequent years the Gypsies’ free spirit and spont;
as important a role in flamenco’s developme

Americans. The atmosphere of taverns and Gypsy encamp-

exchange between singer, guitarist and audience, resembling
that of early New Orleans jazz halls, even fostering the same
necessity for improvisation.

Nonetheless, heightened awareness among Spanish

dynamic of collaboration, has been comparatively recent. The
Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship heralded a decline
of flamenco, a stifling of jazz. By the 1950s flamenco had
become a caricature of itself, a cartoon of tradition cynically

much needed foreign currency - Spanish musicians drawn (like
other Europeans) to new forms of American jazz were forced to

post-Franco rejuvenation of Spanish culture. Groups such as El
Ultimo de la Fila and Mecano have achieved fame abroad with
variants of flamenco pop but perhaps nowhere have the fusions
been more honest and exacting than in flamenco’s marriage to
jazz.

The current involvement of young Gypsy musicians familiar
with jazz yet faithful to flamenco marks a break with the
earlier works of Miles, Gil or Coltrane. Whether it be the

guitar group Pata Negra, or even the intrepid flan
variations on Miles and Parker classics by ex-Dolores
ophonist and flautist Jorge Pardo, experimentation is the
Working with an ever-widening ar

tion the i

it of a

sopran

ax, off-set by i

n the sinuoi
he sharp trill of Spanis
ic bass, to deep blasts <
ing beat slapped out on

This exigent pulse, admired by Pardo, combines with the
raw galvanised vocals of flamenco to produce the music of
intensity and courage which Spanish musicians are trying to
weave into the harmonic colour and improvisational freedom
of jazz. “When I sing my mouth must taste of blood,” declares
Gypsy singer La Piranica. “If the saxophone, the instrument
closest to the human voice, is capable of imitating jazz vocals,

the battle is being won. The worldwide performances of Paco
de Lucia’s fusion sextet have helped; as has the popularity of

Polygram features the jazz piano of Dominican Michel Camilo.
With Quincy Jones’s incorporation of flamenco into last year’s

grown.

Following the international release of Zyryab, Paco de
Lucia’s latest collaboration with Chick Corea, this year has
seen the Spanish publication of two highly praised flamenco
jazz recordings from Pardo and Spanish bassist Carles Bena-
vent, Las Cigarras Son Quizd Sordas and Colours. 30 years after
Sketches of Spain the Spanish, overcoming their isolation, are
ready to sketch us a self-portrait.

By James Dyson

Zyryab - Paco de Lucia with Chick Corea (Polygram)

Passion Grace and Fire - Paco de Lucia with John McLaughlin and A1
di Meola (Phonogram)

Y Es Ke Me Han Kambiao Los Tiempos - Ketama (Polygram)

Flamenco Jazz - Pedro Iturralde (MPS)

Las Cigarras Son Quizd Sordas - Jorge Pardo (Nuevos Medios)
Colours - Carles Benevent (Nuevos Medios)

63mm

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each damaging admission with cries of delight and encouragement’
Auberon Waugh, Sunday Telegraph

‘Naim Attiallah is a good interviewer. He is curious about other people; he is
modest enough to let them say their piece without feeling the need to put his say
in; he is obviously a good listener’ Lynn Barber, Independent on Sunday

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Music & TV

THE COUCH
POTATO’S
SOJNTCT

Ben Thompson skips channels, trying to find the soul of music on television

The potency of Street music BECKY SINKER

Begin anywhere: a random burst of Tuesday
night TV. East Ender Sharon Mitchell, off the leash from her
psychotic husband Grant, goes to a college rock gig with
Michelle Fowler and learns to like the band as she gets
drunker. Later, a male student charms her by singing “Time to
go home”, the closing theme from Andy Pandy. Half an hour
on, in a repeat of Citizen Smith , an old schoolfriend of Wolfie’s
returns to Tooting claiming to be a successful rock impress-
ario, and plunges the Popular Front into chaos by holding

cornering the American market. They will be called Rat and
(in even more eerie prophesy of 80s LA false-metal legends

The shrewd understanding of music business practice demons¬
trated in this episode is only compounded by the fact that the
svengali turns out to be a fraud, on the run from the law.

The most important thing about the strong musical theme
to this random burst is perhaps that it means precisely
nothing. Without getting into a churlish (if enjoyable)
argument about which of our two most vital cultural forces -
TV, music - has the greatest effect on most people’s lives,

is being broadcast as an aspect of the other. This is why Nicam
Digital Stereo is such a pointless innovation: because the

651WIRE

Music & TV

The fact that TV music is an integral part of a larger
experience does not of course mean that it has no life of its
own. An anguished letter in The Daily Mirror's free (“Worth
50p!”) Saturday TV Weekly supplement recently mourned the
change in the theme to Emmerdale. This was obviously part of a
larger disquiet about the dropping of the vital “Farm” part of
the programme's title, the new racy storylines, and the
depopulation of rural areas, but the musical complaint was
strong enough to stand on its own. Aesthetically, it is

replaced it with a charmless Brooksided-up electro-hiccup,
which lacks even the Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
swing of the Mersey soap’s tune.

Who better to discuss this sinister development with than
Tony Hatch? Author of not just the original Emmerdale theme
but numerous (roughly 20 he thinks, which is - interestingly

recognisable TV signatures. Hatch, New Faces' Mr Nasty,
moved to Australia in the 70s with his wife Jackie Trent
(showbiz legend knows them, together, by the happier
domestic soubriquet of ‘Mr and Mrs Music’) to escape top-rate

Rumbles of discontent have reached him from the Yorkshire
dales. “I’ve heard that some members of the public aren’t too
pleased with it,” he admits, “but I haven’t heard it myself so I

around with? “The great danger for me is that if they do
change it and people don’t like the new version, they might
get rid of my theme altogether.” Never one to undervalue the
importance of the repeat fee, Hatch’s personal favourites from
his TV canon are the longest runners: the original Emmerdale,
which would now be in its 21st year, and Crossroads : which

also had ^he distinction of being re-recorded by Paul
Probably the most exhilarating of all Hatch’s themes is BBC
one is brilliantly played,” he concurs happily. “It was an

think Tony Fisher was the lead trumpet, and he was really
bursting bloodvessels.” Does he himself have any set working
methods? “Just to get it done as quickly as possible - I

the minute I’ve finished being briefed by the client.” This
speed of operation helped Hatch towards his most spectacular

When Crossroads creator Reg Watson was
seeking out submissions for a signature tune to his Grundy
Corporation’s new down-under Soap, a time limit of six weeks
was given. Drawing on their own experiences as ex-patriate

and Jackie had theirs on Watson’s desk the next morning, and
the rest was cultural history. Does he get the same thrill from a
TV theme’s endurance of endless repetition as he does from his
original 60s pop hits (“Downtown”, “Don’t Sleep In The
Subway”)? “They are different, but yes, definitely. I do view

interesting motif within the first few seconds; a call signal if
you like, to entice the audience from the other room into the

Hatch is living refutation of the widely-held belief that the
world of TV theme music is where pop careers only go to die.
Among subsequent generations, writing TV theme and
incidental music has been a merciful release, particularly for
those - the Other Two from New Order say, or Eric Clapton -
for whom upfront charisma and personal involvement have
always been the hardest pop star qualifications to fulfill.
Clapton’s soundtrack for Edge of Darkness , which gets as big a
cheer as any greatest hit when he plays it live, is the sound of a
musician at peace: left, like the masked sonic crusaders of the
BBC Radiophonic Workshop (see The Wire 98), to get on with it.

submerge happily within the medium, not be grafted clumsily
on over the top. Otherwise the viewer is left with the

coverage is the musically-scored ‘highlights’ medley - the
snooker players’ trick-shots and crowd-pleasing facial tics
martial led to the sound of Elton John’s "I’m Still Standing”,
the darts champion’s triumphant march through the qual¬
ifying round choreographed to Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes
singing “Up Where We Belong”. It is possible to have too much
of a good thing. This is also the reason why, though it might

Foetus duetting with Lydia Lunch at the start of May To
December, or Belinda Carlisle singing Jacques Brel under the
titles of Beverley Hills 90210- it is not particularly instructive.

And yet when a familiar but external musical theme
emerges organically in a TV drama environment — a song on
the Queen Vic’s jukebox, or when Len Fairclough’s niece

considerable. This is because they the characters are listening
to or looking at the very same thing that we the audience do,
and the music has taken us the audience momentarily inside
their magical world. For some reason only music can do this -

69EWIRE

I Soundcheck: extended reviews of Art Bears, Da Lench Mob, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Glenn Gould,
Napalm Death, Emily Remler, West Nkosi and many more.

Outlines: lan Penman hymns the singers and the song.

Jazz Licks: Andy Hamilton reviews the new, Tony Herrington reassesses the reissues.

Club Licks: Kodwo Eshun takes on the latest dance releases.

The Chairperson dances: Betty Carter fills halls all by herself. Picture: Gen de Ruyter.

70SWIRE

73SWIRE

# S WIR F

* ' OZRICS, ETC + )/JAZZ-ROCK + FUSION.

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79 SWIRE

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53SWIRE

Neneh Cherry

HOLIDAY ’93: ITALY continued from page 59

hours in the local bar “El Grido” (yes, that’s Spanish, not

Talking to Marcello Piras later helped crystallize some
thoughts about jazz and Italy. Marcello’s researches have led

African," he argues. “This might explain why so many
southern Italian musicians had a role in the spread of jazz at
the beginning. I think of such musicians as Eddie Lang, Leon
Roppolo and so on. When these first-generation immigrants
came into contact with black music in the United States they
found something not entirely unfamiliar to them.” So there’s
an Italian tinge as well as a Spanish one? “I think that they are
two different nuances of the same tinge.”

Prompted by the mixed results of the week’s music from the
viewpoint of vocalists singing in English (see vocalist Catia Di
Stefano’s ‘problem’ referred to earlier), I asked Marcello

sing jazz in Italian. But there are first some technical problems
. . . our words are longer, accents fall in a different way.” He

Holiday 93

But though bel canto may be opposed to jazz singing, Italian
music. “Louis Armstrong, when he was a little boy, listened to

dozens of Italian operatic arias, and the same can be said of
Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin, Sidney Bechet. They listened
to Italian and French operatic music ... The strong projec¬
tion that you can find in Armstrong and Sidney Bechet can be

Basie and Italian opera - an unlikely combination. Maybe
all music is connected, somehow. Certainly the special colli¬
sions of Barga Jazz were felicitous, and I came away with a
renewed respect for Italian jazz. And (no disrespect intended) I
think magical Barga has certain advantages over Crawley as the
location for a festival. By Andy Hamilton

Marcello Piras is setting up a Society for the Study of American music.
Contact S.I.S.M.A., Piazzale dei Caduti della Montagnola 48, 00142,
Roma, Italy. To find out about the Barga Festival 1993, write to Cultural
Officer, Barga Jazz, Comune Di Barga, Barga, Lucca 55051, Italy.

.95SW1RE

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CLASSIFIED RATES ARE: Situations vacant
and trade £1 per word, private advertisers 50p per
word, minimum ten words in each case; phone

£15 per column centimeter for both private and
trade advertisers, except semi-display situations

FRANK WRIGHT. Wanted tapes of Centre Of
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UNKNOWN PUBLIC seeks creative music,
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*30 Chico Freeman, Alex von

Tony Oxley, Diamanda Galas,
Weather Report.

33 Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeek,
The Beats, John Russell.

34/35 Lester Bowie, Branford
Marsalis, Dexter Gordon, Serge
Chaloff, Loose Tubes, Paul Lytton

37 Bobby McFerrin, Hampton
Hawes, Dirty Dozen Brass Band,

38 Wynton Marsalis, Wayne
Shorter, Nigel Kennedy.

Sheila Jordan, Tadd Dameron.

40 Ornette Coleman, Charlie

42 Horace Silver, Bud Shank, Xero

43 Pat Metheny, Robert Johnson,
Albert Collins, Charlie Mariano,
Itchy Fingers.

Rare

AND

Fine

44/47 Courtney Pine, Cecil Taylor,

*49 Julius Hemphill, Frank Morga

& Mike Stern, Billy Jenkins,
Clark Tracey, Akemi Kuhn.

*50 David Holland, Tommy Smith,

51 Marilyn Crisped, Andy Kirk,

A complete collection of back
issues of The Wire is a prized
archive indeed: with many

Michael Nyman, Bobby Bradford,
John Roe Collective, Essential
Albums Of The 80s, British Jazz

igton, Billy Strayhom,
■is, Orphy Robinson,
lick, Roy Eldridge.

All back issues are £2.50 each including p&p.
Europe & Overseas Surface Mail £3.00
Airmail £3.75

Double issues: £3.00/£3.50/£4.25

Payment: cheque/money-order made payable to The Wire (in
UK sterling only please): Send to: The Wire Back Issues,
45-46 Poland Street, London W1V 3DF.

104 Futures & Pasts Eno, John Cage,
Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Gerry
Mulligan, The Orb, New

°ff"

57SW1RE

THE WRITE PLACE

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